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Description

FAMSIZE counts the number of the person's own family members living in the household with her/him, including the person her/himself. These include all persons related to the person by blood, adoption, or marriage as indicated by the census forms or inferred from them.

FAMSIZE is constructed from information in RELATE (relationship to head) and from the constructed pointer variables SPLOC, MOMLOC, and POPLOC (location of spouse, mother, and father). The design of FAMSIZE and other constructed variables follows the methods developed for IPUMS-USA.

Note: Users should be aware that in the United States census of 1880, where relationship to the head was not transcribed for non-relatives FAMSIZE may be inaccurate in some cases. Please contact the NAPP staff with information about any erroneous relationships discovered.

Comparability

This variable is comparable for all countries, but see the discussion on Family Interrelationships for discussion of these NAPP constructed variables.

Canada
No constructed family interrelationship variables are available for 1852, 1871, and 1881 Canadian censuses, and Canada did not enumerate relationship to household head in these years. However, information about family interrelationship can be deduced from RELATE in 1891 and 1901 censuses. Future releases of NAPP will include imputed versions of these variables, similar to the IMPMOM, IMPPOP, and IMPSP in IPUMS-USA.

Mecklenburg-Schwerin
No constructed family interrelationship variables are available for the Mecklenburg-Schwerin census of 1819, which contains no information on relationship to household head.

United States
The comparability of this variable is affected by the information available on family relationships. FAMSIZE is based on the information contained in RELATE (Relationship to household head), MOMLOC, POPLOC, and SPLOC, for all years except 1850-1870. In these years, it is constructed from IMPREL (Imputed relationship), IMPMOM, IMPPOP and IMPSP. See MOMRULE, POPRULE, SPRULE, and "Family Interrelationships" for a discussion of variations across years in these variables.

Universe

Availability

• Canada: 1891, 1901
• Great Britain: 1851, 1881, 1881
• Iceland: 1801, 1901
• Norway: 1801, 1865, 1875, 1900
• Sweden: 1900
• United States: 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1880, 1900, 1910